Paint Me the Sky
by Permanent Rose
Summary: Caddy helps Rose to realize how lovely change can be when you have a future with someone you love. Tom/Rose


_A/N: I have immersed myself in the Casson world again so of course I had to dabble in fic writing. This fic sort of spins off from Rose's blog, but you don't have to have read that to read this. Also there are certain facts that I am choosing to ignore regarding my favorite childhood couple. Ahem. Oh, and Rose is 17 in this._

Caddy's zoo flat is lovely. It is small, but homey, with piles of toys and books and unfolded laundry. Perhaps I like it so much because it reminds me of our own house, which is never uncluttered, no matter how many times Dad bulldozes piles and piles into rubbish bins and hauls them away. Perhaps it is because the only other flat I have ever stayed in before was Dad's London one – terrible, stiff, cold – the sort of place where coasters and slippers were implicitly mandatory. But Caddy's small zoo flat is perfect, very lived in, with cheery pictures scattered all over the walls. Paint illustrations – mine. Crayon scribbling – Buttercup's.

Today, Caddy has made tea, with tiny specks of mint sprinkled on top, served in thick the ceramic mugs that I had taken Buttercup into town to glaze.

"What brings you here today, Rosy Pose?" I love it when she calls me that. It makes me feel small again, and if I close my eyes, I can imagine her painting her hamsters' feet and humming softly while she rescues spiders from corners of the kitchen. "Lonely at home again?"

I nod into my tea, my blush hidden in the steam. It is the same answer every time, when I show up several times a week, now that I have passed my driving exam. Caddy was clouded with disbelief the first time I showed up in Mum's old car. "Passed? The first time?!" Her shock turned into admiration rather quickly. "How clever, Rose." I felt rather pleased as well, and told her that I was lucky to have a brother-in-law who gave me fantastic lessons for free.

"It is always lonely at home now," I mutter with a sigh. "I thought I'd be used to it by now." I envy Indigo and Saffron, who never had to be alone, arrived only a year apart and flanked by me and Caddy. "What will the house be like, when no one is there at all?" I worry about that, the vast emptiness, with shadows of us lurking amongst the stillness. What will Mum and Dad do when there are none of us left to look after? There is a strangeness, thinking of them growing old together in that house. And then, with sudden panic and some sloshed tea on the carpet - "They won't sell it, will they?!"

Caddy, always good at piecing together my thoughts, laughs a bit. "Of course they won't sell it. And even if Dad got it in his mind to do so, you know Mum would never let him. The whole world could come tumbling down before she would ever give up her shed."

"Yes," I say, comforted by her words and the warmth of my tea.

"And we will always need it to come home to," Caddy adds, and I am soothed, thinking of Christmases and birthdays and the house cheerful again with the laughs and rumble of small children. "I used to dread everything changing, too, you know," Caddy continues.

"Alison, Ruby, Beth," I nod thoughtfully.

"Yes. It is difficult when things change, and sometimes it is very sad and lonely for a while, but it often gives way into something much lovelier than you could ever imagine."

She looks around the room then, at Buttercup, aged seven, constructing his train set. Timmy, the woolly labrador, glued to Buttercup's side, his tail thumbing loudly against the carpet. Jassy and Juniper are napping, tangled together on a pile of throw pillows, their hair a patchwork of colors, splayed against their cheeks. "They just plunk down wherever they please," says Caddy. "And they sleep so soundly."

"Just like Indigo."

"Yes. Very much like Indigo. Impossible to wake." Caddy looks at them all so lovingly that it makes my own heart ache. And then she says, in a quiet voice, "Five years is not such a very big gap, Rosy Pose."

XXX

 _Five years,_ I think to myself on the drive back, _feels big when it is seventeen and twenty-two. Worlds apart, really._

I pull into our street, park the car, shut off the engine. Learn back against the seat, inhale deeply. It smells musty, with hints of old coffee and the earthy smell of oil paint. When I close my eyes, I do the other necessary maths - _twenty and twenty-five. Thirty-two and thirty-seven. Ninety-one and ninety six._

And really, Caddy is right.

It's not so big at all.

XXX

It is much later when I think about it again, huddled in my room with a thick book about a time long ago, a carefully lit candle filling my room with a warm glow and the scent of cinnamon. Dad snores down the hall, the sound soft and steady. Mum's shed light is still on, but I suspect she has dozed off hours ago. I think about Caddy and Michael and the cozy flat and the growing number of children. I think mostly about Caddy, though, and the way she smiles when Buttercup makes her a picture. The way she cradles Jassy when she crawls into her lap. The way June gives her sloppy kisses. The way she can look at Michael like he is the only one in the world.

The way that she has created all we had in the Banana House when we were small - all that and more. I try to imagine me when I am Caddy's age, with some difficulty, because I have never been certain if I would want children of my own. I love my nieces and nephew dearly, but I also love giving them back.

XXX

I wake up suddenly, the book pages crumbled beneath my cheek (I will need to flatten them before depositing it back at the library), blow out my candle, and watch the wisps of smoke rise in the darkness.

A cat.

A cat will do.

A cat, a smoky, dark little shadow, with wide golden eyes.

Yes, a cat and a cozy cottage, filled with books and paints and wide blank walls ready for bursts of imagination. And of course, never silent, because there will be a guitar and someone lovely to play it.

And then I am digging for my mobile, buried in tangles of blanket, and typing a text so quickly that I don't even take a moment to consider it.

 _Cats or dogs? Which do you like more?_

My heart rattles in my chest, a caged butterfly. I throw my phone across the room and hide my face in my pillow.

But it is only moments before it is humming loudly against the carpet. I scamper out of bed to retrieve it, flicking open the screen.

 _Dogs._

Bloody hell.

I should not listen to Caddy. Love is foolish, really, and look how long it took her to get things with Michael right.

But then -

 _It's such a nice night here, the kind that makes me think of you. I am thinking of all the paints I would need to make the sky. You've ruined me, Permanent Rose. I never meant to see the world in so many colors._

Oh.

 _Oh!_

Perhaps, then, a dog would work quite nicely after all.


End file.
